Aaron Gray

The digital equivalent of the Olympic, the World Cyber Games (WCG) will kick off the Grand Final in Singapore this month. With over 800 participants from 70 countries, WCG 2005 will be the largest gathering of the world’s most elite gamers ever and the first of a new exciting gaming category.

Mobile gamers from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan will go head-to-head against one another in the WCG Mobile Championship 2005. This is a first for WCG to have a mobile gaming component incorporated in the event.

What a difference a year makes. Just a year ago computer gamers were the only ones competing in the WCG championship for the title of king of gamers. With the inclusion of the mobile phone category in the WCG 2005, this clearly opens up a whole new door for both gamers and mobile game programmers.

Mobile games are fast gaining recognition from various segments of the gaming community – handheld game consoles like Gameboy DS and Sony PSP not included. Yet.

Why mobile phones then?

Phones come with a few different forms of wireless connectivity: short range like Bluetooth or over a network like GPRS and EDGE. With the ability to upload scores and battle it out with fellow gamer sans wires, people are starting to perceive mobile phones to be more than just for calling and messaging another person.

If you look at some of the offerings by IguanaMobile, SMSBunny or other similar mobile content download service, you’ll notice that network games are beginning to surface.

Yours truly witnessed an exciting mobile game competition not too long ago. It was an N-Gage event, with the final being held in Genting Highlands. The N-Gage games chosen for the final include a soccer game, two racing simulations and a couple of mobile Java games.

The highlight of the event was the head-to-head battle between two players in the FIFA Soccer 2005 and the Asphalt: Urban GT where the game decks’ built-in Bluetooth were utilised for the wireless battle.

The potential of multiplayer gaming will be fully realised when 3G takes off. A demo at the Maxis 3G launch event had me testing out a Counter-Strike/Quake look-alike, but it’s not the similarities between the PC counterpart and mobile phone that caught my attention; I was playing it against another live human player over the 3G network… and in real-time!

Although I do have my reservations about manoeuvring my character clumsily with the phone’s keypad, I saw with my own eyes what 3G can offer to mobile gamers everywhere.

Of course, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi can still very much function in a similar manner, albeit with a limited range. Frame rate might also lag due to the Bluetooth’s relatively low connection speed. Wi-Fi is also quite uncommon on mobile phones.

But I digress. Now, back to the WCG. Games will compete in four J2ME games selected by for the WCG Mobile Championship: Bruce Lee, Goolie, Chopper Rescue and Midtown Madness 3 Mobile.

One mobile gamer from each country who has qualified for the Asia final will also automatically qualify for the WCG Mobile Championship (Grand Final) where prizes of up to US$12,000 await the winners.

Worldwide recognition, cash prizes that totals up in the thousands… now who dares say playing video games is a waste of time?

Mom and Dad, I hope you’re reading this!